Technical education system produces technical manpower
of different competency profiles. The pass outs mainly work
in industrial, business and training institutions. Some
students become entrepreneurs by setting up their own
enterprise. The courses offered by the technical colleges
need to be market driven. The teaching and learning process
is the core function of the technical colleges. In the
modern world that changes rapidly with the evolution of new
technologies, the ways of training should be modernized
with the emerging trends of ICT. So this study aims to
ascertain the u s e of ICT for the teaching and learning
process at technical colleges.
The objectives of this study are:
• To study the present level of using ICT for teaching and
learning process at technical colleges.
• Identify the activities of the teaching learning and
process that ICT can be used and the ways in which ICT
can be incorporated into these activities.
• To identify the advantages of using ICT over the existing
methods used for the teaching and learning process.
• To identify the difficulties in using ICT for teaching
and learning process at technical colleges and to propose
suitable solutions to overcome these difficulties.
The study was carried out mainly through questionnaire
survey and interviews to achieve the above objectives. It
provided the opportunity to identify the present status of
using ICT for the teaching and learning process. It also
helped to identify the future trends in technical education
through ICT.
The major two problems identified are the lack of
resources and the lack of competence of academic staff
members in using ICT for the teaching and learning process.
The two suggestions forwarded are to initiate instructional
resource centers and to introduce pedagogical license on
ICT usage to encourage the academic staff on using ICT for
teaching and learning.
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The major future trends ICT usages are on interactive
technical education programs on Internet and World Wide
Web. The need for using new technologies in technical
education with the potential of ICT such as web based
learning and e-learning are identified as the ways of
providing the technical education to a larger target group
than present traditional methods.
Finally this study provided the opportunity to come up
with recommendations which will be useful for enhancing the
teaching and learning process by integrating ICT. This
study aimed at only one function of technical colleges; its
leaching and learning process. Therefore further studies
should be carried out on the ways of using ICT for other
functions at technical colleges such as administrative,
quality assurance, career guidance and student counseling,
social marketing, curriculum development, student
evaluation etc. It will be much helpful to provide market
driven technical education for the youngsters of our nation
to meet the challenges in the twenty first century.